1581-1626

English mathematician and astronomer. Gunter received a divinity degree from Oxford, and became a Rector in Southwark. In addition he became professor of astronomy at Gresham College, London. He published some navigation works, tables of logarithms, sines, and tangents, and coined the terms cosine and cotangent. Gunter made a number of measuring instruments that bore his name: Gunter's scale, Gunter's chain, Gunter's line, and Gunter's quadrant. He was the first to observe the secular variation of the magnetic compass.